The present invention relates to a beverage brewer.
A wide variety of beverage brewers, including those commonly used for brewing and dispensing coffee and tea, exist in the prior art. Some such brewers require the manual placement of a quantity of ground coffee, tea, or other beverage component into a brewing chamber, and, as part of a brewing cycle, a predetermined volume of hot water is then delivered to the brewing chamber to produce the beverage. Other brewers include a system for metering a predetermined amount of ground coffee or other beverage component from a hopper to the brewing chamber followed by a delivery of a predetermined volume of hot water to the chamber. And, in some such brewers, multi-hopper arrangements may be employed, with each hopper containing a different type of ground coffee or other beverage component, thus allowing the user to choose the kind of beverage to be brewed.
Furthermore, in the food service industry, for example, in restaurant and catering facilities, a portable dispensing container (also referred to as a “shuttle”) is often used in combination with a brewer, with the brewed beverage being dispensed into the shuttle. The shuttle is used to convey a hot brewed beverage from a central beverage-making location to one or more convenient locations for dispensing and consumption by food service personnel or the consumers. At that central beverage-making location, it is often desirable to brew multiple types of beverages, such as caffeinated or decaffeinated beverages, with each type of beverage dispensed into its own shuttle.
Thus, there is a need for a beverage brewer that facilitates the dispensing of different types of beverages into different shuttles.